Dale Johnson: Today, I’m joined by Joni Eareckson Tada. The Lord has used her life in so many ways around the world; Joni is the founder of Joni and Friends International, an organization that ministers to those who are disabled around the world. She’s lived a life of consistent and faithful ministry to the Lord Jesus, demonstrating that joy can be had even in deep human suffering. Joni, today, we’re delighted that you’re here to share with us about some of that suffering and the ways that God, through His Word and through His promises, has given you hope and the ability to live with joy in this life.
We have a Pre-Conference coming up and we’re calling it, Human Suffering and Heaven’s Hope. What I want to do is to allow Joni to share some of her experiences through some of the questions that I’m going to ask her, just to share some of the experiences that she’s had in the way in which Christ has ministered to her through His Word, through the hope that we have of heaven that’s to come.
I’m thinking about 2 Corinthians 4. We all know the reality that our outer man is decaying, and our inner man is being renewed. I can’t help when I think about that passage, I think about you and what the Lord has done in you, that you have a way of seeing through the eyes of the unseen, as Paul encourages us to do. When I think about your physical challenges, I think about the ways that we try and address some of those physical challenges. We often focus on trying to just help the physical part of our being, but we know that with physical challenges, there are so many emotional strains and struggles and stresses. Can you talk for a second about some of the emotional struggles that come with living with a disability?
Joni Eareckson Tada: Well, it’s emotionally challenging just to wake up and face it every day. Especially if you have a long-term disability, you look for that time when God will release it, when God will set you free. Whether it’s an upcoming surgery or a new medication you’re going to try, for most people it might not be until heaven. I know that when I was first injured, to me, heaven was the place where I was going to get my new body and jump up and down and kick and do aerobics. I mean, I just thought heaven was going to be the greatest thing coming down the pike.
But back then, all I could see was how I would benefit from heaven. I didn’t realize back then that heaven is a holy place for holy inhabitants, and I just really wasn’t interested in that part. I only became interested when I saw my disability as the very refining tool that God was going to use to squeeze bitterness out of my life, anxiety, fears, doubt, self-centeredness, to make me the kind of holy person who then would be excited about heaven for the right reasons—not to just get back what I lost, but to give something to Jesus.
You mentioned 2 Corinthians 4 and how outwardly we are wasting away. It also says, I think in that next verse, that our light and momentary afflictions are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. But heaven won’t be the day of Joni, it’s going to be the day of Jesus. I get to bring brighter wattage to God’s glory by my response to suffering and my disability down here on earth. That’s kind of exciting, that heaven is not a place where I’ll get back and more, but heaven is the place where, because of my obedient response, submission, yielded to God in my disability, God will then use that obedience to bring greater glory to Himself. I can’t wait for that day when it’s not the day of Joni, but the day of Jesus.
Dale Johnson: Amen. You talked about several emotions—bitterness, anger, even despair. Sometimes you feel despair, moments where your body is not operating like you want it to, anxieties, stresses of all kinds. But there’s a real sense when I hear you talk about heaven and I hear you talk about the glory of Christ, there is a real sense in which that matters to you every single day, to help to control those emotions, to not let those emotions control you. Talk just for a second about the beauty of heaven and what we’re hoping in, how that matters every day as you walk, and controlling those difficult emotions.
Joni Eareckson Tada: Well, they are difficult emotions. I mean, every day with chronic pain, not to mention paralysis, I feel like I’m right on the edge of a bankruptcy of grace. But perhaps that’s the way God intends it, for just at that moment when I feel I cannot go on, there are God’s arms, His everlasting arms to catch me, sustain me, and “buoy me up.” It fosters this enormous dependence on Him, how I need Him.
It’s also taught me something that the Puritans used to talk about—living with suffering is the art of asking less of this life, because you know more is coming in the next. Living with suffering is the art of adjusting your expectations and diminishing your list of wants down here on earth, and increasing your desire for eternal investment in heaven above. I look at my affliction and, in the same way I think Jonathan Edwards used to talk about, how everything we do down here on earth increases or decreases, it either enlarges or diminishes, our eternal capacity for joy and worship and service in heaven.
Those cosmic stakes are so high, I don’t want to waste it on bitterness and anger and self-centeredness. I don’t want to fritter away my day feeling sorry for myself, I’ve done that so much. I’ve turned on the TV, I’ve went to the refrigerator, I’ve watch the soap opera, I’ve read a stupid novel because I just want to escape. But when I realize that I’m diminishing my eternal estate doing that, I’m minimizing and I’m jeopardizing it, that’s not worth the risk.
I just want to put those emotions in the right perspective and let God help me deal with them, lay them aside, uproot the bitterness. “God, I’m sorry. Forgive me. Help me. I don’t even know how to ask for help. Help me know how to ask for help. I’m not even sure that I’m repenting in the right way. Would you please give me the true spirit of repentance? Because I know how to repent. Please! I’m repenting of my repentance. It’s so bad.” I mean, just digging down deep into the very garbage bottom layer of your anger against Him and saying, “Help me!”
Some of the most beautiful passages of Scripture that helped me in my hardship are the shortest. “Lord save me, Lord help me,” and He does. And then I feel that my eternal estate is enlarging. My capacity, my “vessel,” as Edwards calls it, is growing bigger. To me, that is exciting because I wouldn’t but overflow with joy if I can trust Him.
Romans 15, “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace.” Isn’t that a wonderful prospect in your suffering, to experience all joy and peace as we trust in Him. That’s the kicker. That’s the key. As we trust in Him, we’ll have all, not just some, but all joy and peace, so that we might overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit, so that it might just be front and center in our thinking from morning until night. That’s a good thing to keep in front of your thinking.
Dale Johnson: You know, as I hear you talk, it’s just a beautiful thing to hear you talk about heaven in such a way. It’s not a “pie in the sky” fantasy desire, it’s a reality that Christ has confirmed through His Word. He is giving you hope in walking through physical struggle. I can’t help but think about, in your case, there’s a certain lens of “seeing” that Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians 4 where you see according to “unseen things.” You’re not seeing your life as dictated and dominated by physical disability, but you’re free from that. You see from a kingdom perspective to me. That’s a beautiful thing. Can you talk for a second about how your physical disability has even freed you from thinking according to this world and really thinking according to what’s to come, the unseen things of the kingdom of God?
Joni Eareckson Tada: Sometimes when we suffer, it’s so easy to get so “me” focused. How is this working together for me? How will this benefit me? How will this affliction strengthen my faith? How will this enlarge my hope of heaven? How will this make me a better person? How will this change me into Christ’s image? Everything is so “me,” and one thing that I enjoy about suffering is that, like a rasp, like a file, God just files away all the “me” and runs rough shots, at times, over our “me-centeredness” until we realized that heaven isn’t about me either. It’s not my reward, my crowns, my eternal estate, it’s finding your identity just in Christ. I have to lose myself every day in my suffering in order to find myself in Jesus.
For me to lose myself is to divest myself of all the sin that I know separates me from Him, and the more I do that, the more I recognize and nail self-pity as what it is; it is sin. It’s an offense against a holy God. The more I strip away the self-centeredness and “me” focus, the more I become melded with Christ. The more my heart gets beating in rhythm with His, the happier I find myself in my situation and the more content, because I’m united with Him.
The very thing that should make me very me-centered in my suffering—“Oh, my goodness, my leg bag needs to be emptied, my corset needs to be tightened, my hip needs to be repositioned, I need someone to help me get up in the morning and somebody help me lay down in bed”—the very thing that you think would make me really self-centered, because it’s all about me and who’s going to empty my leg bag and who’s going to cut up my food and put me to bed and get me up in the morning, is the very thing that strips away all that. Because it’s a sheer misery. It’s morbid, it is impossibly depressing, and so I’ve learned to see the wheelchair, the suffering, the chronic pain, the quadriplegia as that which gets me to the point of, “strip myself of me” and gets my heart beating in rhythm with Jesus real soon.
Get away, get rid of the self-centeredness and the anger, the doubt, the worry, the fear of the future, the frustration, the fudging the truth, manipulating others with precisely timed phrase, and get rid of all the hogging the spotlight and get rid of it. Just get rid of the record of other people’s wrongs, just getting rid of all of that so that my heart can be melded with Christ and I can be found in Him, going to lose myself.
Not to deny the reality of hardship, but to know that this should be the very thing that pushes me into the arms of my Savior, not separates me from His arms. I want to be lost to myself and thereby found in Him, because then I can be happy. I can be content with a life of chronic pain and quadriplegia. It sounds impossible to most, but with God all things are possible. But the possibility isn’t even going to be possible without becoming unified with Christ, finding Him as your all in all, waking up in the morning enjoying Him, delighting in Him, letting your mouth overflow with praises to Him, and finding His beauty in His Word, finding His loveliness in your quiet time.
It is really all about Him. I love that my wheelchair is my schoolmaster. It’s that thing that pushes me deeper into the arms of Christ. It should be that which keeps me focused on myself, but paradoxically, is the very thing that God redeems to push me into the arms of Christ. That is a wonderful truth that makes it worthwhile.
Recommended Resources
For more resources from Joni, visit the Joni and Friends website here.
